Grace Kelly

In the library Henry sees Clare for the first time

In the Time Traveler’s Wife though she has seen him seeing her many

She asks him to dinner noting how she has prepared her life

For this moment

There is a bauble of uncertainty in the daily current

Of when or if we will ever meet

I speak to you from my pillow before slumber

Waiting on a day like Henry’s

I meet artists.

I often wonder if she is you.

Underneath the color pallet

The Sisyphean introductions smear

The parade puts me in books to write a book

Swirling counterclockwise speed reading

To wind closer to the moment of our intersection

As if the universe has told me, “You have to write this first.”

This cosmic imperative rationalized in a mosaic of faith

The lost jobs, children, the nomad residence

The dancer, the yogini, the potter, the costumer, the painter

The heady breaths of alone past midnight

Barefoot and glass

Meditating in kundalini with a twin spiral rising

Anus, genitals, navel, heart, larynx, third eye, crown

Flush into this library of lessons of what existence is

The quantum smallest of the small in a barter of geometry

In time I pray we have

I see the gray hairs and wrinkled peace fingers

The homeless neighbors knocking for a hand up fearing storms

I think of Grace Kelly in Rear Window

Bewitching Jimmy Stewart hovering over in a shadowed kiss

How’s your leg? Hurts a little. And your stomach. Empty as a football.

And your love life. Not too active. Anything else bothering you?

Who are you?

The outside world and me

Bathing in the silence of neighborhood gunshots 

A dark house with one lit room typing

8:46 pm on a Saturday night

Thinking about the solace of if you knew who I was

So it was not so hard to find you

Respiration to hope in a poet’s intuition

That when I see you, I would know

Feeling so silly how many times I have felt that way before.  

Rear Window

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGASCP2mNaM

The Time Traveler's Wife
https://vimeo.com/151775514

Squeak-talk Mirror Soliloquy

Keep an eye on the insect in the room

The fly you try to smash

Buzzing by the ear

Swat, whiff

Stand on the bathroom counter

With a towel swatting

Lands on eyebrow

Smack own face

Wings aloft

Flashes in peripheral vision

Stalker itch

Of relinquishing the numb

How hard it feels to connect  

The why bother

The syrup paste lethargy

To cease pursuit

Let the damn insect feast

Acknowledge nobody is coming

It is just me and the winged one

Constant barrage of the word optional

Retirement of spinal fusion and depletion

Suck on the helium and have myself a party

Squeak-talk mirror soliloquy

Let the fly pop the vomit balloon

Got the utility bills on autopay

Might be a while until the flies get their fill  

Painted Faces

Mūla Bandha hula hips

Breath held count

Thirteen-year-old daughter

Drive to Ponchatoula

Sushi lunch chop sticks, punctured seaweed wrap

She reforms the rice and snow-crab

Into the shape of a heart on her plate

Tells dad about what is going on in her life

Release, exhalation into sun salutation

Shoulder blades cut the world back

Sternum impudent

Hastas boom sign language to the sky

Meld a nest at breast bone

In the willow-leafed shutter cage of ribs beneath

Bristling breath in an ancient language

Caminando, caminando

Costa Rican shoreline drumbeat

Swim down Atlantic current, Californian sun

Salmon pink sand grit water color to canvas

Howling lunar navigation painted light

Flared nostrils breathing goddess dance

Sand dune grass blades medicine woman baptism

Dive for the crippled starfish with broken fingers

Watch tides clock as digits grow back

In an ocean bubbling loving forgiveness

To be a person,

Painted face and one-step hair

Plank into the quiet darkness of infinity

Wish of how the world could be

Classrooms of kids stark-chained hearts

Steel-bullet resilience compassion

Classrooms of adults raised female hands

Eye contact of beaded empathy

Honey drip ink mandala painted on a flint creek trailhead

Quiet inside the pitch-black vision room

Ebullient kernels of courage in knocked-over crayon boxes

She speaks flame-flicker tongue lighting way in quiet doubt of self

In the forest fire we are all in with the cool water of reminding us to breathe 

Thirteen

Nina sang don’t explain

Echo pit mumbles abusive labyrinths

I will drive to see you  

For the first time in a year this Saturday

You are thirteen now

Your mother abandoned our home when you were four

Cached conversations for a magpie’s prickly toys

Fractured mirror in the glass bedding of the nest

When you were five you told me

“Mommy says you only pretend to love me.”

In our rental house with a picture frame of our former triad

On your Montessori bookshelf

I would fall asleep cuddling 

After story time was over

I remember your wooden drawbridge Christmas castle did not come with instructions

I tried to fit it together past midnight

Head solitary and you told me

“Oma said to pretend the pillow was the judge and to punch it

For making me go with daddy”

There was the morning I promised you we could finish our animal parade

With the plastic figures after school at the house you woke up in

I remember the passive aggression legal snares in your mother’s eyes

And you in tears in the car seat and helping you go

To the place pointing the barrels

I remember the door knob where I left letters to try to communicate

And never getting answers outside of courtrooms and sealed annulment tribunals

Your grandfather said he thought I was gay

There is a fear in the pit of me

I have yet to be able to shake

Pulling up into the driveway of the house your mom and I built together

To see you call your stepdad, dad at seven

Your mother say to you in front of me about another man

“Dad will get that.”

The quiet pass of my tongue upon my teeth inside my mouth

The passenger seat as I pull in has always been empty for nine years

I remember when you used to hide underneath the sofa sometimes

When I would come to pick you up or the times you clawed at my face

I just tried to give you a hug and calm, you were so young

Whenever your mom couldn’t be there because of work at the exchange

You always struggled like if you did not say goodbye with seven kisses with her

The world would end;

I was cast as someone you were taught to endure in public

We had our secret labyrinth of library books and playing pretend moose

Narnia and Harry Potter, Swan Princess and the iPod playlist crossing the lake

Stuffed animal ballet and yoga for kids to help you learn how to calm down

The tantrums, I could see your pain

We did the stickers on the calendar for good behavior

We had bath times and you liked it when I made up stories about whales

And heroines that could run upon the waters

I taught you how to ride with no training wheels

When your mom got the police chief and his brother the billboard lawyer

The sons of the former sheriff, her best friends from childhood

On the board of my audit client, a domestic abuse center

To have my boss come into my office and say

“They think it is best if you are not associated with their organization anymore.” 

“They said you were abusive.”

I confronted your mother on the porch that she dreamed of and we built

I lived with your grandparents for two years after Katrina

So we could sell our storm house and build this porch sasquatch for your mom

She said, “I don’t have anything to do with that.”

That’s when I knew I had to leave town

The custody I spent a year in court winning

I gave it away to become a weekend father

You were eight and I prayed we had enough time

Adultery’s mansion on the hill

The happy house you were taught to call it

Two little brothers and your father’s silent wallops

You turned twelve and decided you didn’t want to come to New Orleans anymore

Not to the city of your birth, my home, and the bed you told me what mommy tells you

That stays empty

We text and joke, you tell me about all the books you read

You like Stephen King and Agatha Christie murder mysteries now

Beyond the dragons and the wizards into the great who done it

I think of sitting on the sofa with you with a great pile of library books every Tuesday

Teaching about plots and what authors want you to think

My little Padawan

You want to go see a PG-13 horror movie with me this Saturday,

But have to be back to be an altar server at Catholic mass

Magic words and spells

I just want to know that you are ok

I want to listen to you tell me anything you wish to share

Your girlfriends, theater troops, soccer games, quiz bowl

Boys and what high school next year

To love and to be loved

That is all there is

I miss you so

The Fourth Sentence 20170924

Branded knee pads for geriatric billionaires

Church of the publicly exposed Hollywood photo-op contagion

The Orange Fascist carnival barker outed the white

Don’t you go talking about people’s mamas

The B word more offensive than the N word

Sound of ratings plummet and discharge squawk talk

Healthcare bill limp dick in Congress to a crotchety Vietnam vet

Infighting the Reds and to Daddy My Feet Hurt President Humperdink

That sign of unity put out by Commissioner Go To Hell

Is, “How Long does Jerry Jones Botox injected transplanted baby buttocks flesh suit for jowls have to hold this pose midfield at the altar of Monday Night Football?”

Ok until the Viagra ad is prepped for break

What about next week and the hereafter…

The 400 years and systematically racist criminal justice system

Nah be grateful we gave you a moment on our reality show

With fists, bench seats, linked arms, and knees

This weekend you had your out to misconstrue

That this was about people’s mamas

Not Philando Castile getting his chest blown out through a strapped seat belt

With a pink flower booster seat with Ms. Reynold’s daughter within target range

On Video for who’s world?

Time lapse remap photo op for sports cares

Flag and nation and addressing the violence of a nation’s military

Imbued into the violence of a nation’s militarized police

So, Pres. Snake-oil Suites Salesman,

“Do you believe there are unimportant people?”

America first flag on a Budweiser can and misconstrued Bruce Springsteen’s

White T, Blue Jeans, and Red cap folded into a back pocket

Bruce wrote page 314, “More than ten years after the end of the Vietnam War, inspired by Bobby Muller and Ron Kovic, I wrote and recorded my soldier’s story. It was a protest song…It was a GI blues, the versus an accounting, the choruses a declaration of the one sure thing that could not be denied…birthplace. Birthplace, and the right to all of the blood, confusion, blessings and grace that come with it. Having paid body and soul, you have earned, many times, over, the right to claim and shop your piece of home ground.”

Or does the Boy Born in the Faberge Bubble

Just hear the drumbeat and hi-tempo and clap

Like “I was born in the USA too.” Shut up about politics

Translation stop making me hold up a mirror

Second verse of Woody’s “This Land is Your Land”

“In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?”

I'm not even going to ask you to go listen to Chuck D... 

Shit show Same Show

Let’s see what you do after the highlight reel is dim?

After the hurricane like W for Katrina or Hypo-tweet for Maria

Madre, mother, B Word, Grab a pussy

U.S. Citizens Puerto Rico, Palante, who counts? 

Bankrupt Golf property, debt, colored bodies

Take care of Wall Street, equity prices

Mr. Marmalade Mar a Largo, got time for a round of 18?

Dashcam, shown in court, hold away from public.

Three People. Three sentences.

Your brake lights are out.

I’m not pulling it out.

Did you just kill my boyfriend?

Courtroom. No fourth sentence

No justice. No Peace

Billionaires kneeling, arm-locking now

Where are you putting your money about that fourth sentence? 

Great Expectations

Hiatus, year of, purgatory writing enclave into books

Away from poems into the mustard gas

I do not want to be me

The coughing activist into protest of having to be a person

Hazy fuzz vision detachment to identity

Tethered animal sexuality and the vehicle nature of a body

To evacuate the cab for a few years

The hustle intellectualization into other people’s libraries

Finding body parts in my breakfast cereal

Slipping teeth and bones

Blood tests for diseases there is no way I could have

Sponge-like to the emotions of yoga mats and barrooms

Sequester and wrestle with the alienation

Parents aging into who is going to wipe the fecal matter lottery

Closet John Prine large size t-shirt father insisted on purchasing for me

Told him I wear a medium and he said, “No you don’t.” Corner pile. Never worn

All these great expectations

“And I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife

Everybody leaves and I’d expect as much from you”

Tumbleset language and that pregnant look in her eye

When you know you want to be excited but that blood is a bomb

“Everybody leaves, so why wouldn’t you?”

Misunderstandings in the street, switchblade versus a glass of water

Shatters and slits and the quiet spits out chalky incisors

Dumb mouth, filed down fingernails and nothing to touch for another year

Learn it again love's natural end is a waterboard drink 

Silence draining from a temple, absence like a ballpein hammer  

Mailbox name changes, looking at the dirt in nailbeds

Flooded city streets and yellow one a.m. post bar lights

Kiss on a public road and the white mire of a Toyota Corolla

Crumble loose-leaf scribble into a trash bin

Whiskey and a morning shave cut it off and see what remains

Drop of blood trying to remember the last lucky thing I ever did 

All these great expectations

“And I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my old life”

“Everybody leaves, so why wouldn’t you?”

Love myself, but I don’t. Trust a friend, but I don’t

Unroll breathe and rip off this naked skin

Timeframe mind games and I swear I want to let you in

Stand with key clockwise to open and watch you run

Games I never learned at fifteen

Coming back again in the meat market

Trinkets and lamps lit up implants

Like a cyborg I was supposed to be

Drill in the metal and mine out the blood

Say the old stories until the tongue blots out the sum

Wake up, shake up, drive out and walk down the strip

Stare into a boutique window and wash the glare over me

Reflections, mentions, and what was never there to be

Television on as bar couples laugh at Kevin Hart

Ed Sheeran playing overhead

Keep walking home to an empty desk with Pablo Neruda and Anaïs Nin

Keyboards and hiatus, deleting accounts, unemployed

Time to figure out, why did I bother

Orwell’s rules and pretentious diction into insular books

No one will read like a script

Years ticking an underfunded pension

Use up the reserve to write and celebrate bankruptcy with a gunshot

Considerations of puzzles I don’t care much to solve

Dead kids and silence lives in that spot over hills

Countdown and mowed sounds of what I had to give

Best was never quite good enough to keep that look for long

Drawn back, drawn down into midnight’s siren song

Baby, there is a darkness, an infinite, and this sparkly fizz never made much sense to me

Not that you wanted, but if you had I imagine I’d have fucked it up  

Waiting for you to get bored with me

Car gone, word blood, rambling into empty sheets

That side of the bed is an unlined horizon

Chest wound stitched up with solo trips to the grocery

Two a.m. typing and C.I.A. whistleblowing

To find something else to give a damn about

The liquid of waiting for what never heals

Love the whole damn thing, just try to love the whole damn thing  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZ-jdPGPBc